


there's a memory in waking up

by americandy



Category: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americandy/pseuds/americandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nick drinks to avoid dreaming</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's a memory in waking up

**Author's Note:**

> title from "need you now" by cut copy

The morning I blinked my eyes open and I realized I was curled up in you was the first morning I ever really felt eighteen. The night before, when you brushed my hair out of my eyes before putting the rolled cigarette you'd proudly made between my lips, I felt like I was on fire. Like we were. When you said "about morals, I only know what is moral is what you feel good after and immoral is what you feel bad after. I think I would feel incredible after kissing you, and I haven't sinned yet, so I'm not gonna start now. I am going to kiss you, and then I want you to touch me like I can tell you want to." Hemingway quote aside, (when had you read him?!), you made an offer I couldn't refuse.

I had a theory brewing that if you let me touch you, you'd like the way I went about it. Good lord, was I right on that count. I felt goosebumps rise on the surface of your back as I ran my fingers up your spine. 

\--

waking up from a dream like that made nick feel two very different things: ephemerally, so so happy, yet in the long-term, the feeling brewed into a kind of moroseness that sat under the surface of his skin.

if he and gatsby had known each other as boys, if they'd known each other in the war, things would be so different.

maybe gatsby wouldn't have made the effort to become financially profficient, maybe he would still be james gatz. maybe nick wouldn't have made the mistakes he had... maybe he'd be on better terms with his family. 

the thing that is either the craziest or, adversely, sanest thought about this little fantasy is that nick would be okay, happy, probably enamored, with james gatz. with a boy who came from nothing and became nothing... a boy like him.

though nick did become an alcoholic... so that's something. he drank with gatsby and when he was alone he drank for gatsby. for times that may have meant something more had context and correctness not kept them mere moments of feeling.

sometimes nick thinks about how different a man james gatz would be from the jay gatsby he knows today. james would be thinner... with hair that's constantly out of place from a job working the docks. he'd have a kinder, smaller smile, that was real and beautiful. his skin would still be tan -- that's what a job by the ocean will do to you. 

maybe they'd live together in a ridiculously small place not too far away from the wharf. maybe the only kind of design motif featured would be one functionality and purpose. maybe they'd have a dog, something little enough to be happy in their undersized home.

maybe james would come home and find nick writing and kiss his neck... and the writing would be put on hold. maybe james would finally touch nick like a man who wasn't worried or always somewhere else, mentally. 

nick drank during the day to escape these fantastic notions and during the night to pass out and prevent them from being entertained at all, even by his subconscious. 

on mornings like this, he cursed himself for not finishing off the gin that would've hammered in the final nail in the lid of the coffin these kinds of fancies lived in.


End file.
